John Olivares Espinoza

“What first comes across our minds
About the stocky Mexican

Pushing a mower across the lawn
At 7 a.m. on a Saturday

As the roar of the cutter wakes us?
Let me take a guess.

Why do they have to come so damn early?
What do we make of his flannel

Shirt missing buttons at the cuffs,
Threadbare at the shoulders,

The grass stains around his knees,
The dirt like roadmaps to nowhere,

Between the wrinkles of his neck?
Let me take a shot. Dirty Mexican.

Would his appearance lead us to believe
He is a border jumper or wetback

Who hits the bar top with an empty shot glass
For the twelfth time then goes home

To kick his wife around like fallen grapefruit
Lying on the ground?

First, the stocky Mexican isn’t mowing the lawn
At 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

He doesn’t work weekends anymore ever since
He lost one-third of his route

To laborers willing to work for next to nothing.
Second, he knows better than to kneel

On the wet grass because, well, the knees
Of his pants will become grass-stained

And pants don’t grow on trees, even here,
Close to Palm Springs.

Instead, after 25 years of the same blue collar work,
Two sons out and one going to college,

Rather than jail, and a small but modest savings
In case he loses the remaining two-thirds

Of his work—no matter how small and reluctantly
The checks come in the mail—

My father the stocky gardener believes
He firmly holds his life

In both his hands like pruning shears,
Chopping branches and blossoms,

Never looking downward as they fall to his feet
In pieces like the American dream.”
― John Olivares Espinoza, The Date Fruit Elegies